Weekend Reading and returning to "normal"

Hello everyone, I hope you've had a good week.  

I got the all clear from my doctor on Monday and my arm is slowly healing. It still looks terrible and it's swollen and peeling but the areas of redness are clearing.

I bought this Finnish Arabia porcelain vase for my mother during the 1960s. When mum died it went to my sister and she returned it to me on her last visit. It was very modern when I bought it and I'm not entirely sure it was to mum's taste, but she kept it and used it. I remember her roses sitting in it.

Today's lunch will be spinach and feta ravioli, frozen - I'm not quite back to full scratch cooking yet, with homemade tomato sauce. I'll make a cinnamon tea cake this afternoon for our morning and afternoon teas. We're running low on fruit at the moment but I don't want to go grocery shopping till Monday so we'll eat our one fresh mango and have some tinned fruit after that.  I'm happy that I had enough food here to keep us going while I was sick.  What are you eating today?

Making zucchini fritters for lunch during the week. 

Cleaning the kitchen and sink, below.

I'll be talking to Grandma Donna later today which I'm looking forward to very much. We both have a similar view on life and simple homes but we express our views in different ways. It's always interesting talking to her and seeing her in her home.

Folding wash cloths and tea towels in front of the fan at my desk.  🙂

Of course, cleaning my home is never-ending with laundry taking up a fair amount of time. I'm lucky to have a good washer and dryer as well as an outdoor washing line, an under cover washing line and a bamboo clothes airer. No matter what the weather, if I wash it, I can dry it too.

The garden is very overgrown and during the past couple of weeks, the only time I went out there was to take these photos yesterday. The rain has pushed the Queen Anne's Lace flat, you can see some on top of the snapdragons at the front. When I start gardening again, that's the first thing I'll pull out.  There are plenty of seeds in the ground now, it's been dropping them for a couple of months. I have no doubt it will regrow as soon as there is space, water and sunshine.

I hope you've had a good week and that things are going well at your place.  Soon it will be either hot or cold, depending on where you live, but for us it will be HOT. It's not my favourite time of year, I prefer cold weather. Still, I enjoy the flowers the hot weather brings. What are you doing at home now? If you celebrate Christmas, have you started preparing yet? I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.  xx

WEEKEND READING

• ‘No one knew they existed’: wild heirs of lost British honeybee found at Blenheim

• Dilutions Cheat Sheet for Dr. Bronner’s Castile

• Cracks in food system driven by year-round hunger for fresh produce begin to show

• DIY How to Make Paper Christmas Ornament / Tutorial

• Helen Garner: I always liked my diary better than anything else I wrote

• Cats track their owners’ movements, research finds

• Hard graft: backyard gardener claims world record for tree bearing 10 different fruits

• Worried about waste and having too much ‘stuff’? Get rid of the fitted kitchen

• What can 1,000 Australians show us about the risks of COVID-19 infections and vaccines?

• King parrots are dying of a wasting disease that may be spreading through birdbaths

• How to convince your apartment strata to go solar

• A teenager was accidentally invited to a grandma’s Thanksgiving dinner. Six years later, he’s still going back